Embedding evidence in public health

In October 2022, the Academy hosted a meeting to discuss how to facilitate the effective use of evidence by England’s new public health structures.

In October 2021, the public health functions in England were redistributed across two new entities, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), as well as NHS England. A year on, there is an opportunity to reflect on how each of these structures use evidence to inform public health policy, and how to ensure that the UK’s innovative public health research ecosystem is best utilised to achieve improvements in public health.

While this meeting focussed on England in the first instance, the meeting also enabled the sharing of lessons learned between all four UK nations. As well as identifying opportunities to strengthen the translation of evidence into public health policy, the outcomes from the meeting will inform a broader piece of work to revisit the Academy’s 2016 Health of the Public 2040 working group project, which will examine the shared and unique challenges faced by different nations.

The meeting convened key experts across public health, academia, policy, funders and regulators, to:

• Reflect on the research remits of OHID, UKHSA, NHSE and Integrated Care Systems.
• Consider the challenges of translating research and evidence into public health policy.
• Identify opportunities for England’s new public health structures, researchers, policymakers and funders to ensure that evidence is utilised effectively to improve public health.

The meeting was chaired by Professor Catherine Law CBE FMedSci, Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology at University College London.

The meeting report can be found on the right-hand side of this page.